Wednesday, January 30, 2013

While financial woe is nothing
to cheer about as many of us have found out in the last five years of poor
economic growth and a string of financial scandals that have largely gone
unpunished but an article published by the Independent detailing the British National
Party’s (BNP) apparent financial troubles is a more than legitimate exception
the rule[1].
The BNP, despite their recent rise, have always been a party despised by many Britons,
even among fellow far right groups.

There should be no shock if you
were to witness off the cuff yelps of joy to the news that its leader Nick
Griffin (who is probably as, if not, more unpopular than the party and its
platform itself) suggested in a speech to party faithful that in order to raise
funds, they had to “begin collecting scrap” while comically enquiring “the
price of copper”[2].

While this may seem quite
comical and admittedly satisfying for anybody with a fleeting affinity with the
human race, the BNP’S financial problems are serious to say the least. The BNP
has been in financial arrears for some time since their poor showing in the last general election underlined when
the BNP “declared that at 31 December 2010 it owed £582,961 and had £15,846 in
the bank”[3].
Numbers like these would terminal for a business never mind a well disliked
party short on friends and high on enemies that would like nothing better than
to see the party file for bankruptcy.

The BNP has been in decline for
last three years with many of its members leaving the party exposing deep
division among its leadership and indeed its rank and file. Its decline has been
underlined by gruesome local election defeats with the party losing many of its
local councillors and a MEP (who left the BNP with only one MEP, Nick Griffin).

It’s no real surprise considering the party
platform was, for the lack of a better word, disgusting. No party can really
expect to stay in power at the local level for any amount of time if one of
their councillors can, with a straight face, state their objection to “the
building of new schools in the (Burnley) area because they would encourage
children of different backgrounds to integrate”[4].

While the BNP’s demise is not
so shocking due their unreasonable stance on just about every issue that is
relevant to British people, It is surprising that they’re floundering in an political
and economic climate where far right parties and movements usually thrive.
Matthew Goodwin excellently illustrated this point when he wrote in a guardian
article:

“Consider this: despite
economic recession; despite deep cuts to local services; despite continuing
public concern over immigration; despite high levels of dissatisfaction with
the main parties; despite ongoing political distrust; despite an unpopular coalition
government that includes the Liberal Democrats – home for many protest voters;
despite continuing public anger over the expenses scandal and more recent media
and cash-for-access scandals; and despite a Labour party that has not yet
reconnected fully with its core base – the BNP has completely failed to make
even an electoral squeak. At one time, voters in some parts of the country
appeared willing to back the party. Today, they appear completely uninterested.
In my view, the British National party's quest for electoral success is
finished and Griffin's attempted strategy of "modernisation" lies in
ruins”[5].

In sum, the British National
Party may be in dire straits and may, as many hope (including many of its far
right counterparts), dissolve but unfortunately, the BNP are not the be all,
end all of Britain's far right movement and as Goodwin rightly pointed out, the
real point of focus is “what will emerge to fill the vacuum”[6].

Monday, January 28, 2013

Hiring people to take up difficult
positions will always be a challenge, no less when you’re picking a nominee to
be the head of the SEC, but it would help if the nominee didn’t butter their
bread by defending the very characters they are about to be tasked to hold to
account. It would be wrong to say that Mary Jo White is beholden to the
interests of Wall street, but a
considerable portion of her resume suggest that may be true.

Before the case can be made for
White being a poor pick for the SEC post, it would be wise to point out why she
is up the consideration in the first place. Mary Jo White is an accomplished
prosecutor who had prosecuted infamous mobster John Gotti and the terrorists involved
in the first attack against the World Trade Center[1].

However the real problem lies not
with who she has prosecuted but who she has defended. In her time in the
private sector, White had defended major figures on Wall street including “Kenneth
Lewis, the former chairman and chief executive of Bank of America, and John
Mack, who held the top job at Morgan Stanley”[2].
White also defended (inexpicably) “nine independent directors” of Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corporation in the middle of the phone hacking scandal in 2011[3].

Why White’s background matters
so much is that after five years since that financial crisis that brought the
country to its knees, no CEO or chief executive has seen the inside of a jail
cell and with the nomination of a former director of the Nasdaq for the position of leader of the SEC, an
organisation seen by many to be soft touch, the prospects for change are slim[4].

Long standing issues in
American politics come to the fore such as the revolving between the private
and public sector, for which White’s accomplished career serves as a prime
example. This is why David Sirota in
Salon notes that :

“With this revolving door spinning
so fast,… it has created a culture whereby prosecutors and SEC officials have an
incentive not to enforce the law. Simply put, if you know your next lucrative
job is on Wall Street, you aren’t all that interested in prosecuting Wall
Street, because that might limit your private-sector career prospects”.

In sum, Mary Jo White has
had a sterling career in both public and private sectors but her involvement in
both and her probable ascent into a key role in regulating the US financial
industry leaves much to be desired when she will go to battle against Wall
street figures.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

There has always been the
feeling among most people around the world that their political representatives
do not hold the most progressive opinions about their citizenry and Japan’s
finance minister Taro Aso went some way to confirm that long held
suspicion. Nobody avoids putting their
private views in the press than politicians, Aso broke the mould and stated
that a quarter of his country’s
population “should be allowed to “hurry up and die”[1]

The Irony about his public
statement stating in essence that the elderly should die and be quick about it
is that Aso, no spring chicken at the
age of 72, belongs to the very same
group he is encouraging to die quicker due citing that if he was to get sick he would
‘feel’ “increasingly bad knowing that (‘treatment’) was all being paid
for by the government”[2].

Aso means exactly what he said when
he stated his lack of comfort of being an expense on the government income
balance sheet citing that he doesn’t
want “end-of-life care” and made public
the fact that he had “written a note instructing his family to deny him
life-prolonging medical treatment”[3].

While it is clear from Aso’s
statement that he would like to have some control when he faces testing
sickness and impending death, this position is not likely to become legislation
any time soon as his party supported a move to “double consumption (‘sales’)
tax to 10% over the next three years” to deal with “rising welfare costs”[4].

This tax increase was not a
move to protect the elderly by politicians out of the goodness of their hearts
but a calculated realisation that the elderly is a crucial voting bloc with “almost
a quarter of the 128 million population is aged over 60.. (and)(t)he proportion
is forecast to rise to 40% over the next 50 years”[5].

While there is a real problem of
Japan’s older population straining it welfare system, It does shoe Aso’s
contempt of his fellow citizens. This hasn’t been Aso’s first day at the rodeo
as far as outrageous public statements are concerned as he has attacked Japan older
population in the past when he was Prime Minster citing them as “tax burdens
who should take better care of their health”[6].

In sum, politicians are not the
most favoured among us when it comes to popularity, especially when they
confirm long held suspicions that they have little to say that would flatter their
fellow citizens. However Aso, who comes from a privileged background, earns
such suspicion expressing his superiority of Citizens of which he is similar in age, most of which who have worked
hard all their lives.

While there is a lot of
speculation about what President Obama’s second term will look like, it would
be easy to argue is going to look pretty much like his first. Obama will do
little about changing the United States drone policy or curbing the war on
terror despite its destructive outcomes (and what looks set to escalate in the
in light of the hostage tragedy in Algeria) or climate change as he can’t
discuss climate change Republican party, who have many members in congress and
among the rank and file who don’t believe it’s happening and think it’s a hoax.

Due to the tragedy at took
place in Newtown, will have a an ugly fight with NRA and the Republicans in
getting legislation through congress telling from the already ugly tone gun control
debate has taken already. The NRA, free
of shame, went after the children of the President citing the false discrepancy
between the protection his children get and opting not to put
armed guards at every at school across the country as if the President and indeed
his children are not the best targets for kidnapping or murder for any group
looking hurt the country.

It will be a draining but
necessary fight but Obama, if he gets something done, will have some political
capital to spend, and it is vital that he spends it trying to get to a jobs
bill through congress.

While his election served as
the first black swan against the maxim that presidents don’t get a second term
in a bad economy, the Obama campaign were really successful at destroying Mitt
Romney’s simple message of ‘are you better than you were four years ago’ by launching
a successful character assassination against it messenger by portraying him as
an aloof and cold-hearted plutocrat who could care less about the plights of
working people.

There was no real talk about
jobs as Obama has done very little about tackling America’s unemployment rate
and in the recent negotiations preceding the media and congress created ‘fiscal
cliff’, which would have saw the much despised bush era tax cuts expire, Obama
saw to it that the tax cut hated by most of his party are now permanent in
exchange for an small rise in the tax rate.

Obama will get somewhere in the
almost certain fight about immigration as Republicans have woken up to the
reality that the public is to the left on many of the social and cultural
issues that plague the country. He will
get a lot of movement in getting the Dream Act passed and getting currently
undocumented immigrants on a track leading to citizenship.

In sum, Obama Inauguration will be a joyous occasion as Americans will once again bears witness to an African American taking
the oath of office and also for all who love lofty speeches and the choreography
of American Politics in general. However
when the music and the celebrations dampen, there is a great chance of Obama
proving once and for all the trends of all politics is continuity, not change.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Wall Street is not the most
popular street in America but with JP Morgan cutting the bonus of its Chairman
and CEO Jamie Dimon, It shows that some wall street institutions are responding
to public outrage. In light of making a massive loss in the derivatives market
(which played a key role in nearly bringing the US financial system to its
knees), Jamie Dimon saw his bonus halved as his company effectively said the
buck stopped with him when they cited that Dimon “bears ultimate responsibility
for the failures that led to the losses in the CIO and has accepted
responsibility for such failures"[1].

However, it is not enough as
Jamie Dimon will still have a significant bonus ($11.5 m) despite displaying terrifying incompetence[2].
According to an article in Forbes, Dimon displayed his shocking ignorance about
the company he heads when presented with news of JP Morgan Chase’s loss in the
market, responded angrily demanding that he saw “the positions” of the company, or in in
other words, the actual trades upon which JP Morgan Chase made losses[3].

Could you imagine incompetence of
this kind at your job resulting in a cut of your performance and effectively
merit free bonus if you didn’t know what investments your company specifically lost money? A
Checkout Operator in Tesco will face the sack for shorting the till by a meagre
£40 but a high powered CEO can so ignorant not to know his company’s loss
making positions in stock market is just short of being criminally negligent.

This is made worse by the fact
that politicians, despite reams of evidence suggesting that strong scepticism
being the reasonable approach towards banks, still have faith in financial institution
and its leaders as incredibly:

Congress being made up of
Congressmen and Congresswomen, no one thought to ask why the CEO of a financial
industry leader handling billions a day didn’t know where the money was.[4]

This is
because in light of technologies in the marketplace to make JP Morgan’s loss
making or profitable trades easier to access, JP Morgan use systems “that were
developed in the 1980s, or earlier” making accounting for losses and even
profits a taxing proposition[5].

Jamie
Dimon is a case that posits the problem of punishing bankers for unwise
financial deals besides imprisonment as Kevin Roose of New York Magazine smartly
pointed out:

You
think the guy who pulled down $40 million in the last two years — and
who already gets his black cars, private jet travel, and other perks paid for
by his employer is going to go hungry?[6].

Telling
from his reaction to his punishment in the press, he is fully aware of this
dreary fact as he confidently demanded to release the report which served as a
basis for cutting his bonus as he confidently asserted that losses in the
billions “are close to being a “non-issue” for the company”[7].

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Love this blog, or like looking stylish? check out The Carnage Report apparel at CafePress. we are priced fairly so you won't have to break the bank.If you read us, why not wear us. Check our The Carnage Report store at CafePress here:http://www.cafepress.com/thecarnagereport1Thanks for reading!Alex ClarkeEditorThe Carnage Report

Friday, January 11, 2013

I’m sure most you reading this (including myself) would like
to vote on what they get paid when they retire but unfortunately for us, were
not shameless MP’s from Kenya who voted for their retirement package yesterday
which includes, according to a BBC News report, “an armed guard, a diplomatic
passport and access to airport VIP lounges”[1].

This isn’t the first time that Kenyan MPs have tried to add
more weight to their purse as in 2012, Kenya president vetoed an attempt by the
MPs to earn a $100,000 bonus despite being best paid politicians in the continent[2]
This comes in the face of the Kenyan government being less than hospitable to
the plight of public sector workers as it has “repeatedly dismissed the wage
demands of striking public sector workers, arguing that the funds were not
available”[3].

However the real tragedy of this situation is that the wage
is linked to performance or the salaries of politicians are not in line with
the salary of the average Kenyan which nearly 13 times less annually than their
elected ‘representatives’[4].

There is definitely going to be a push back against MPs
voting for their salaries and bonuses as
last year it provoked people to march in the streets in protest while rightly
defiling their politicians as “thieves and greedy hyenas”[5].

The timing was especially terrible after the government had
initially rebuff teacher strikes leaving a ‘protest organizer’ to wander aloud "How come our teachers had to strike for
three weeks to get a salary hike, yet within a single sitting the MPs could
easily increase their remuneration?"[6].

In sum, while Kenya’s lawmakers, at the expense of the taxpayer,
can secure a raise so large that it would take a Kenyan “earning the minimum wage…61
years to earn the equivalent” just by voting it, they should expect, better yet
anticipate the ire of their constituents and the nation as a whole as there is no
room for politicians who seem to have no shame about maximizing their wages
based on nothing but their own greed[7].

It is safe to say that financial institutions
worldwide are not the most popular institutions in the current climate and AIG’s
shocking consideration of a law suit against the US government is a key case
study of why. AIG were over a barrel in 2008 when left to hold one the largest
bags in the history of financial speculation after insuring risky loans against
default thought to be of triple A value in the US housing market forcing the US government to bail the insurance company out. The situation
was so bad that government officials “feared its collapse would wreck the
financial system”[1].

AIG received the most cash out of
all the companies that were bailed out in 2008 making even considering joining
a lawsuit filed by its former chief executive Maurice Greenberg reprehensible. The reaction
to AIG considering joining the lawsuit has been met with both shock and anger
by taxpayers and Washington with congressmen Peter Welch (D-Vt) and Michael
Capuano (D-Mass) incensed enough to send a stern letter to AIG chairman Robert
Miller telling him “don’t even think about it”[2].
The letter continued in admonishing the company stating that:

“Taxpayers are still furious
that they rescued a company whose own conduct brought it down. Don’t rub salt
in the wounds with yet another reckless decision that is on par with the
reckless decision that led to the bailout in the first place.”[3]

Robert
Reich shared his view through his twitter account and posited that AIG should
be sued “for stupidity”[4].
While there is no doubt that there are grounds for such a lawsuit, the greater
charge that should be made against the insurance company is greed and
ingratitude. The company was in dire straits when the government stepped in and
rescued it from the ineptitude of its own management and insurance policy.

There was
protests in the streets at the time when AIG where bailed out and the ill will
garnered from this has not gone away making AIG’s pondering over the lawsuit
even worse. AIG has revealed that it has
‘three options’ but in reality it only has one, rebuff the temptation to join
its former employee in suing the government that saved it from ruin and gave it
enough time to return to profitability or face a future of a hostile public and
government should it ever get in trouble again,

In sum,
AIG was not the most popular financial giant in the land of the home and the
brave to say the least before this story and certainly won’t after it as it
risks drawing the ire of both the public and the government in one stroke.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Was this a great country or what! Living in America. It's getting weirder by the minute....

The victims of Hurricane Sandy might finally receive the desperately needed aid from the government this week - but only after the Congress of the United States has been publicly shamed into providing it. In 2005, within a week of Hurricane Katrina's devastation in the south, the people of that region were handed a check for over sixty-five billion to help with the clean up and rescue. Nearly three months after Sandy made her wrath known, the people of the northeast are still waiting. The Republicans have made themselves clear. The only thing that matters to them are tax cuts for a class of people who already have more money than they'll be able top spend in three lifetimes. We here in New York and New Jersey don't matter. Ain't that a scream?

Here's another example of the spreading ethical rot that is killing the United States of America; a country which at one time (Hold onto your hats, generation Xers!) was the best place in the world in which to live. It's not anymore. It ain't even close. Still, we do have the best reality shows on the planet. Stand proud, America!

And I'm afraid the situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets a half-a-shade better. The 113th Congress, which was sworn in on January 3, is still controlled by what used to be called "the party of Abraham Lincoln" (Thank goodness for quotation marks!) The next two years will see more obstruction and legislative sabotage. I like to call it "treason".

The Republican party has spent the last thirty years trying to appeal to the kind of people who historically were not too interested in the political process: insanity junkies. And all of their efforts have payed off quite well for them - a little too well as it turns out. The "party of Abraham Lincoln" has devolved into the party of Uncle Fester. That demographic that the political scientists refer to as "moderates" (I call them "purple agitators" myself) have taken a good look at what the GOP has become and they're headin' for the hills. And many the so-called "Reagan Democrats" are disillusioned to say the least. It's almost as if they got all decked-up for that dream date with Marilyn Monroe, but when the door opened, standing there to greet them was Typhoid Mary in her loveliest party dress.

Since the dawn of the New Deal eighty years ago, that disgusting party's reason for existing has been to undo the programs that Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped bring into being - programs that helped create a middle class that didn't even exist prior to his inauguration on March 3, 1933. Their efforts went into overdrive when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Their efforts are bearing fruit, too. The middle class in America is in the process of obliteration. Long gone is the day when a middle income family could provide their children with a decent living and a college education. Here's the punch line: Most of the victims of the so-called "Reagan Revolution" still revere the man. I'm not making this stuff up.

What must be remembered is that Ronald Reagan was essentially a mask - with a twinkle in its eye and a fine, Irish smile. Remove that mask and what is revealed is the hideous, grotesque smirk of George W. Bush. That's the real face of the "Reagan Revolution".

The only way out of the ditch that the "job creators" have dug us into will be by raising their taxes. And I'm not talking about the modest increase that was proposed by President Obama (and denied by the Republicans) - I'm talking about soaking the bastards. That'll create some jobs pretty damned quick. For a period of at least ten years, we need to bring the tax rates of the richest half-a-percent back to where they were when Eisenhower was president, when a lot of them were in a ninety percent bracket. Just to refresh your American history, the economy did pretty well back then. Am I waging class warfare here? You'd better believe it, Buster. And I ain't takin' no prisoners, baby!

FUN FACT: Back in the summer the Texas State Republican Party announced that part of their platform at the 2012 National Convention will be the demand that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 be repealed as unconstitutional. Since they made that announcement there has not been a single word of reprimand toward them from the Republican National Committee - nary a peep. I kid you not.

It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, the South was predominated by racist Democrats ("Dixiecrats" they were called). For a century after the end of the Civil War, the dear old folks of Dixie could not bring themselves to register with the party of that "bearded, nigger-lovin' bastard that freed the slaves". All that changed in the mid nineteen-sixties when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the said to his aide, Bill Moyers, "We've lost the south for a generation." By "we" he was referring to the Democratic party. It turned out to be the understatement of the twentieth century. Within within a decade, nearly all of the former Dixiecrats fled - like diseased rats - from the Democratic party.

POP QUIZ: Which party welcomed them with open arms?

What happened, quite simply, was a fusion of the economic plutocrats in the Republican north, with the racial bigots in the Democratic south. Had it not been for Nixon's southern strategy in 1968, that coalition would never have come into existence. Had it not been for the south's reaction to the civil rights movement, this country never would have elected a feeble-minded old reactionary like Ronald Reagan thirty-three years ago this November. Indeed, Reagan would launch his campaign from the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, an unremarkable tiny stain on the map whose only claim to fame prior to 1980 was the brutal murder there of three civil rights workers in the summer of 1964....

....and shame on us if we ever forget their names:

Andrew Goodman, aged twenty

James Cheney, aged twenty-one

Michael Schwerner, aged twenty-four

When Reagan campaigned for the White House in 1980, he had a non-too-subtle had a message for the sons and daughters of Dixie who still flew the Confederate flag on their front lawns (and probably still do): "Jim Crow's gonna be given the red carpet treatment in my White House". And for the most part, that was the case. The slow-but-steady gains that black people in America had seen since the dawn of the Civil Rights era began to falter when Reagan entered the White House in January of 1981. In Dixieland he took his stand....

Think about this, folks: When FDR was elected eighty years ago, he was not able to undo the mess he inherited from the Republicans in one term. He wasn't even able to do it in two terms. It took him nearly a decade! Unlike Roosevelt, Barack Obama will not be allowed the luxury of four terms. It will probably take two - possibly three - different presidents to clean up this mess. Thankfully it seems that the American people are starting to awaken from their thirty-plus-year coma. They've finally opened their eyes to find themselves teetering on the economic precipice.